Credential creep

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Credential creep is the trend whereby the credentials required for a certain position are increasing. This may happen when a professional organization increases the entry to practice requirements for the profession, or it may be the result of "one-upsmanship" among candidates for a job, creating a kind of de facto increase in required credentials for a position.

At the beginning of the last century (in the early 1900s (decade)), an individual with a high school diploma could essentially work as a banking professional and rise to the ranks of a branch manager or to even branch president. However, the quest for further education, the industrial revolution and the subsequent surge in national population in the mid-20th century—especially in the north—resulted in a professional transposition. In the process, the bachelor’s degree supplanted the standing of high school training, and the credentials required for certain position increased. This occurrence continued up to the end of the last century; as a furtherance of this trend based on the same conditions, the early years of the current century saw the master’s degree displacing the bachelor’s degree in some job entry positions.

For instance, in the late 1980s, a bachelor's degree was the standard ticket to enter the profession of occupational therapy.[1] By the 1990s, a master's degree was expected. Today, a doctorate is becoming the norm. This was due to the explosion of bachelor’s degrees spurred by the rise in knowledge exchange—hinged on population growth and technological innovation. With the advent of globalization recent years see the PhD taking over the role of the master’s degree—especially professional degrees. Universities are currently reporting significant renewed interest in their graduate programs, with a particular focus on PhD study, as candidates consider retraining or adding new skills to their resumes that will benefit them if the economic situation improves. What once used to be training for the academic profession and open by a minor assemblage of individuals absorbed in research has become a bench-mark for some job entry positions. It is also forcing individuals to push for more advanced degrees in order to be considered for some positions.

Controversy

Some argue that the Ph.D. can reflect overspecialization that manifests itself as a lack of perspective; for example, a Ph.D. might not adequately prepare one for careers in development, manufacturing, or technical management. In the corporate world, some Ph.D. graduates have been criticized as being unable to turn theories into useful strategies and being unable to work on a team, although Ph.D.s are seen as desirable and even essential in many positions, such as supervisory roles in research, especially Ph.D.s in biomedical sciences. Even in some college jobs, people can associate negative factors with the Ph.D., including a lack of focus on teaching, overspecialization, and an undesirable set of professional priorities, often focusing on self-promotion. These forces have led both to an increase in some educational institutions hiring candidates without Ph.D.s as well as a focus on the development of other doctoral degrees, such as the D.A. or Doctor of Arts. Some employers have reservations about hiring people with Ph.D.s in full-time, entry-level positions but are eager to hire them in temporary positions; this is however a reaction associated to job insecurity, especially in situations where most the company leaders hold bachelors or masters degrees.

Trends

Once seen as the pinnacle of academic and intellectual achievement, the interest in PhD programs has picked up at the same time as the economic downturn has ended more than a decade of unprecedented global growth. One country that has recently benefited from an increase in PhD applications is Australia. With 9,163 international PhD students currently studying in the country, universities are making preparations to receive more students at this level than ever before, with increased interest from Indian, Chinese and Malaysian students in particular.[2] One innovation in the Australian context is the recent rise in popularity of coursework PhD programs, allowing students to concentrate on a more structured syllabus in a range of applied areas, such as business and technology, many of which have a directly vocational benefit for the student after graduation. While it is too early to say what the likely outcomes of the renewed interest in PhD study are, with the current rate of development and competition for a limited number of job positions, it is invariable that more people will seek a doctorate degree in the future, leading to perhaps the demand for an even higher qualification.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://chronicle.com/article/Credential-Creep/25476
  2. ↑ http://graduateschool.topuniversities.com/articles/phd/phd-ambitions-more-international-grad-students-target-ultimate-degree
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